The Calendar of Postiness

Which is the Better Chapstick: Burt’s Beeswax or Concrete? An Objective/Subjective Analysis.

May 31, 2007 — The Luigiian

Today I went shopping with my grandmother for a Wii (which we didn’t find), bought a wireless-G router for my computer (which works perfectly), installed doorknobs on two of our seemingly infinite number of doors which need doorknobs (one of which does not work), and of course, “worked on Luigiville”, which always includes working on the Bank. I’ve been working on the bank for around seven years and I’m still nowhere near completion. I think it’s like the Black Hole of LEGO designs.

All right, thank God that’s over. Today we’re going over a very fun, upbeat subject involving lip balm, specifically Burt’s Beeswax, the beeswaxy lip balm which smells and tastes kind of like mint or some other similarly “fresh”, “tasty” smell/taste. I bought some to replace my old Walgreen’s brand lip balm, which just wasn’t working for me. After all, you just can’t pay enough for a minty taste in your lip balm. Like I really wanted to pay for tasteless lip balm.

I could tell right away that Burt’s Beeswax lip balm was the kind of ritzy stuff that Bill Gates would use on his lips, because you buy it from Hasting’s, not Walgreen’s like the other kind, and it came in a tin. (Although to be fair, as long as something comes from a store with an apostrophe and an s, as in Bill’s, Furgler’s, or Macy’s, you can tell that it’s definitely ritzy.) After we’d gotten our requisite intellectual book (namely, Urban Legends: 666 Absolutely True Stories That Happened To A Friend… Of A Friend… Of A Friend, by Thomas Craughwell) and our movie (The Sin Eater, which I didn’t watch), I opened the Hasting’s bag, which contained my new lip balm.

It wouldn’t open, even after I’d taken off the transparent cover they put on so that terrorists don’t put anthrax into our nation’s supply of chapstick. My mother also couldn’t open the container. Finally, I decided to unscrew it, which seemed to work better than the other method, called the “Just Yank The Damn Cover Off Method.” Using the new “Unscrew The Cap Even Though There’s No Grooves For Unscrewing” method, the cap popped off, finally letting me get to the balmy center.

I ran my finger across the substance inside, but alas, to no avail. Burt’s beeswax was as hard as concrete:

It might as well have been.

I tried to get a good dab on my finger, also to no avail. After rubbing on the substance inside for a long while, I finally got maybe enough to put on a mouse’s lips, assuming of course that mice have lips. I realized that it would be a while before I really got to enjoy the benefits of a designer lip balm with a minty flavor.

Finally, by today my lip balm has gained a certain amount of softness, amounting somewhat to the softness exhibited by the keys on one’s keyboard, so I finally get to taste the taste of mint whenever I put what amounts to Vaseline on my lips. The result? I get the taste of mint whenever I eat, including with salsa, ice cream, enchiladas, eggs, bacon, and Chinese food. It isn’t quite what I expected. But then again, that’s the kind of surprise you get with designer stuff like Burt’s Bees or merchandise from Old Navy: That unique feeling from knowing you just spent an extra forty cents for a tin with bees on the cover, bees that, if they were real and alive, would sting you. That feeling of chicness, knowing that you’re better than everyone else because, dammit, your family can spend extra for special lip balm so hard that you can’t actually use it. That feeling that you’re never going to buy Burt’s Beeswax Lip Balm ever again.